Saturday, February 27, 2016

Rocking and a Rolling!!

Work on the new engine has been plodding along very nicely of late and some good progress has been made. Today's work though has the significance of finalising most of the engine assembly work, leaving it almost ready to be transplanted back in the car, so without further ado, let's get started...

Cam Followers
The first job I want to get out of the way so I don't forget about it, is to get the cam followers back in place. They have all been safely stored away in a little numbered box to keep them in order, but before they go in, I squirted a little extra cam lube down the holes.

The outside of the followers was lubed with standard oil, but I added a little blob of cam lube on the face for good measure.

That's that sorted.

Studs
As for the studs, nothing too exciting here, they were just nipped down into place using the double nut method explained in this post here.

Head Gasket
For this, I decided to go for a branded head gasket over a generic patterned copy in the hope it's better quality and will last longer and run a lower risk of failing.

Head and Rocker Rollers
With the new gasket on, the head was lowered into place, The head has already been checked over in this post here and since then, it's done very little so I gave it little more than a visual inspection this time.

The only thing of note here that's worth a mention is that I used a longer than usual head stud near the thermostat housing. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but it will give me the ability to attach the 'L' shaped brackets of the engine hoist without having to undo the head nut. I'll explain further here when I use the hoist to put the engine back in.

Next it's time to get the pushrods out of storage and put them in their place.

After dropping some engine assembly lube in the pushrod cups, I can finally get out my shiny new rocker rollers I bought recently. I have already taken them apart and made sure everything is well lubricated.

Fitting them wasn't as straight forward as I had hoped as the standard washers don't fit properly with the new rockers.

After sourcing some new washers, I was able to torque the rocker assembly in place, just!! Even that was tricky as it was difficult to get the socket on the nut properly; again because the rockers were in the way, but after a little persistence, we were all good.

Once that was done, I could torque down the head using the correct spiral method specified in the Haynes manual and also in this post here. I'm not sure if this method makes any difference or not, but I'm not risking it!

Valve Gap/Lash/Clearance etc...
What ever you call it, it's pretty important to get it right and the specs are available in the Haynes manual. I always use the 'Rule of 9' method when I do it and I must say that it's so much easier to do with the engine out of the car that when it's in. After two passes with my trusty feeler gauge, I was happy that they were all set at the required 0.3mm

Ta-Dar!!!
Wow, I must admit that the engine it starting to look much more like an... well engine once more! It's a real shame to cover the rocker rollers up really, but after a few thousand miles, I'm sure they'll look a bit grubbier and less attractive, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy their loveliness while I can.

Just a few finishing off jobs left to do now and then wait for a break in the weather that coincides with a day off work and I can get it back in the car. OOOooooh exciting!!!!!